


Her Majesty

by Shay_Fae



Series: Before I Weep [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: 1970s, Alternate Universe, Communication, F/F, Falling In Love, Female John Watson, Female Sherlock Holmes, Femslash, Porn with Feelings, Relationship Negotiation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:21:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26977276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shay_Fae/pseuds/Shay_Fae
Summary: It's never just as easy as deciding to have sex.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Series: Before I Weep [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1968706
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	Her Majesty

**Author's Note:**

> Story will make a lot more sense if you've read "Smiles to Go," but doesn't strictly need it.  
> If you haven't, in short Sherlock has had a pretty bad go of it in terms of her previous sexual experiences and a good deal of communication is necessary for this time to go well.
> 
> Very light cw for implied past sexual abuse. Almost no detail is given but if this is a sensitive trigger for you, be cautious.

It started with kissing, which was how things usually started between them, only this time Sherlock stopped them as Joan moved from her mouth to her neck to say, “You can take my jeans off. If you want.”

Joan pulled back to rest on her knees, one hand still sitting atop Sherlock’s chest, rubbing the imprint of her ribcage through Sherlock’s shirt. She looked transiently beautiful, Sherlock thought, in a black tee that had been Harry’s and her denim overalls with the rusted buttons. Joan had let her hair grow out shoulder-length during the semester but she’d pulled it back into a ponytail when Sherlock had made eyes at her over the kitchen counter and they’d abandoned their snack to mess around on the couch. 

“Right now?” Joan asked and Sherlock rolled her eyes at her. 

“No, once I’ve gone home,” she said and Joan giggled, stuck her tongue out at her. It was juvenile and not particularly clever of a response and Sherlock loved her.

“Sorry, sorry, I won’t ask twice,” Joan promised and moved her fingers to the button at the top of Sherlock’s old acid-wash. Her hands shook and for some reason that made Sherlock herself less nervous, watching Joan worry for the both of them as she unhooked the button and tugged a bit at the denim. Sherlock helped her, wriggling down on the couch until they’d gotten the jeans off of one leg and then the other. Sherlock wished she had planned for this better; she was wearing a pair of white panties that had little pink ribbons at each hipbone and which she had owned since approximately eight grade. But she hadn’t planned on it happening today, hadn’t even known she was about to ask until the words were out of her mouth. She knew she could stop the whole thing now with just a look but she profoundly did not wish to stop and that, she supposed, was why she had asked. 

In April, when they had been together for four and a half months and it had become clear that Joan was never going to ask for it, was content to live her whole life just making out with Sherlock on the couch and holding hands under the lunch table, Sherlock finally brought it up.

 _I think we should have sex_ is what Sherlock had said, and Joan- who was good and right and the very best thing Sherlock had ever had- had been perfect about this too. She hadn’t said _are you sure_ like Sherlock was a child and she hadn’t said _yes_ like she’d been praying Sherlock would say something. Instead she’d taken Sherlock’s hand and said, _We’re going to have to talk about this so we don’t fuck it up_. 

The very idea of sitting down and having it all out in one healthy, functional conversation between them was so repulsive to Sherlock as to not even entertain the idea. Instead they’d talked out in snippets over weeks- flashes of conversation as they waited in the hallway between class or in the back of the movie theater where Kelsey worked and could sneak them in for free through the staff entrance. 

_Don’t touch my nipples, I think_ Sherlock had said as they walked from school to the bodega where they could buy loose cigarettes for fifty cents each and the cashier never checked ID. _I tried once, when I masturbated, but it just makes me think of him._

 _Should I not touch your breasts too, or is that okay?_ Joan had asked and Sherlock had thought about it while they walked up and down the tight aisles looking for a chips flavor they both liked enough to waste the money they’d gotten from Nicole Winter for helping her find her lost dog. 

_Better not_ Sherlock had decided and they’d bought salt and vinegar chips and two cigarettes. 

While sitting in the chemistry lab after hours, waiting for Sherlock’s tempered solution to generate any sort of reaction, Sherlock had said, _No penetration. For now, at least. It seems too...I can’t imagine it going well._

 _Alright_ Joan had said from her perch on the stool opposite Sherlock, her elbows resting on the cool stone table. _Would you wanna fuck me?_

That had dried her mouth out so quickly, Sherlock had needed to swallow twice before she could find the voice to respond. _I’d assumed you were generally the more dominant partner,_ she’d said and Joan had shrugged as if they were discussing the weather.

 _I’m flexible_ she’d said _and I think I’d do just about anything with you._

 _Maybe not for now,_ Sherlock had said, for lack of anything large enough to say that could hold all of the pieces of what she was feeling, what she felt every time she looked at Joan and thought _mine mine mine._

They’d concluded during one of Joan’s post-game showers that Joan could likely go down on Sherlock without serious repercussions, and that Sherlock thought she might be able to return the favor but could make no promises. 

Dry humping was okay, they’d been doing that since February, had stumbled into it somewhat accidentally one night as they lay side-by-side in the bottom bunk of Joan’s bed, Joan’s knee in between Sherlock’s own, rubbing against each other lazily as they kissed for nearly two hours until suddenly Sherlock had gasped, jerked forward as if tugged by a string around her navel, and had come suddenly in her Salvation Army jeans. Joan had gathered her up into her arms almost at once, kissing the top of Sherlock’s head and her cheek and her eyelid until Sherlock got her breath back and could laugh into the collar of Joan’s shirt. 

_That was so hot,_ Joan had murmured into the corner of Sherlock’s mouth, waiting to be allowed to kiss her. _I love you so much, you’re so gorgeous._

Sherlock had wanted to cry then, had nearly let two tears slip before she’d hidden them in Joan’s hair. Somehow she had gotten herself enough together to say, _go on, are you close?_ and had moved her hips back far enough to let Joan get her right hand down her own jeans and coax herself to an orgasm with a moan she’d left on Sherlock’s tongue. 

They’d done some version of that dance a few times since, rubbing together without much of a plan until one of them came and the other would get herself there a few beats later. But thus far no clothes had come off and no ones hands had gone below the other’s waist. Since her pronouncement in April, Sherlock had been waiting for it. What _it_ was exactly was hard to think about, but she’d at least expected Joan to bring it up during one of their long makeouts on the couch or in Joan’s twin. Instead April had become May which turned to June and not much had changed. They had two weeks left of school- Joan’s last year- and then a busy summer with each of them working odd jobs to pay for groceries and new albums before Sherlock started her senior year and Joan began commuting to Brooklyn College. 

And somehow here they were now, with Sherlock’s jeans a crumpled pile on the floor and Joan sitting up to work her overalls off, neither of them letting the other get too far away, forcing themselves to stay connected with a pressing foot or a looped hand.

There wasn’t anything special about the day. It was Thursday which meant Sherlock had double chemistry and Joan ostensibly had calculus but had skipped it like most of the other seniors, so they’d gone to find each other after class. Joan had wanted to check in with the dyke squad about a party they wanted to throw before the last week of class and Sherlock had waited for her, making small talk with Marcie, before Joan had caught her hand in her own and they’d walked the six blocks over to Joan’s little apartment.

Joan had put on an album, _Abbey Road-_ she was determined to get through the entire Beatles discography with Sherlock by the end of the term- and Sherlock had cut some potatoes into little wedges so they could make fries. While they’d cooked, Joan had grabbed her hand and they’d danced a little bit in the living room to _Come Together_ and then a bit more slowly to _Something_ , Joan’s palm resting at the small of Sherlock’s back as they swayed and waited for the oven to beep. And then the fries, and the eye-contact, and now this.

“Do you want to- are we having sex?” Joan asked and Sherlock swallowed and looked up at her and tried to figure out if she was scared or just extremely turned on.

“Yes, I mean we- yeah I want to,” she said, not at her most eloquent, but Joan bent double to kiss her anyway, holding Sherlock’s cheek in her hand and rubbing at the shell of her ear with her finger. 

“Let’s-” Joan said, once they’d managed to stop kissing, and by some negotiation they helped each other off the couch.

There was a bed in the living room, behind the Chinese screen, that Sherlock knew had belonged to Joan’s mother before she’d left Joan to live with her new husband on the Upper West Side and pretend she had no previous marriage and no children. They never used it, out of respect or discomfort Sherlock didn’t know, but it seemed too presumptuous now for them to move into the little bedroom behind the only door in the apartment. So instead that was where Joan led her, folding back the screen so the bed lay in the mid-afternoon sunlight. Joan lay down and Sherlock lay right next to her, and for a few minutes they stayed there side-by-side listening to the record until Joan turned just slightly to face her and asked, “shirt on or off?”

“Shirt off,” Sherlock said, before she remembered she hadn’t worn a bra that day. But they’d covered her feelings around her breasts, hadn’t they, and it wasn’t as if Sherlock was shy about nudity, only about touch, so before Joan could do it, Sherlock reached down and tugged her shirt over her head, her head popping through the other side of the fabric in time to watch Joan clench her hand on her own thigh, staring at Sherlock in wonderment.

“You’re so beautiful,” Joan said and Sherlock didn’t know how to respond, so instead she reached out to tug at the black tee and Joan took it off just as quickly until they were both sitting on the bed in their underwear and Joan in her gray sports bra, watching each other. Sherlock looked at the spattering of freckles on Joan’s right rib and the scar above her panties from an appendectomy as a child. Much of the remaining skin was covered in a scale of semi-healed bruises from soccer and Sherlock could deduce the plays that had earned Joan each one. When she looked up to meet Joan’s eye, Joan waggled her eyebrows at her and she couldn’t help laughing. It wasn’t sex, Sherlock reminded herself, it was sex with Joan who was her best friend, her shadow and to whose image Sherlock had been getting herself off to for months now in the privacy of her small room in the apartment she shared with Mycroft. 

“What can I do?” Joan asked once they’d giggled themselves a bit silly and Sherlock reached for her.

“Anything,” she said, as her left hand made contact with Joan’s breast beneath her bra. “Any of the- whatever we talked about. You can go down on me-”

“Yes, yes, I’d love to,” Joan said and moved in to kiss her. Kissing Joan without their shirts was a life-changing experience, Sherlock thought, to be able to feel Joan’s bare back with her hands, to run her fingers over the bumps of Joan’s spine. They pressed too close, and Sherlock’s nipples rubbed against the fabric of Joan’s bra which sent her spiraling for a brief moment but then Joan pulled back and kissed her shoulder and her collarbone and Sherlock was back in her own body, kissing and letting herself be kissed. Joan- clever Joan, brilliant Joan- quickly pulled her bra off and then it was easier, the accidental brush of skin against skin not as jarring as long as it stayed brief. Sherlock couldn’t help but stare a bit at Joan’s breasts- not at all the first time she’d seen them between post-soccer showers and nights after cases where they had to change quickly- but what a difference context made as she marveled at their size, how they’d likely spill over the sides of her hands if she tried to cup them.

“Do you want to lie down, and I’ll-” Joan started and Sherlock was already nodding, moving herself backwards up the bed so she could lie back. Joan crawled up to lie besides her on her forearms and kiss her, her legs between Sherlock’s own and very intentionally not straddling her. This they’d figured out from dry-humping, how Joan could get on top without covering Sherlock, without her feeling trapped or caught. Sherlock arched her back up just to get Joan’s hands on her waist again and Joan moaned softly into the space between their mouths, reaching back for her and she bit at Sherlock’s lower lip. 

The track switched on the record and once the singer had managed a few words, Joan paused in their kissing to chuckle wetly against Sherlock’s tongue, her palms roving up and down the xylophone of Sherlock’s ribs.

“Would you like to share what is suddenly so amusing,” Sherlock bit out, trying to sound annoyed but barely managing steady. Joan nipped at her bottom lip again, tugging at it a bit in the way she knew Sherlock loved, and then laughed again in a pleasant sort of hum against Sherlock’s skin, lifting her head up to meet Sherlock’s eyes.

“We can’t have sex for the first time to _I Want You_ ,” she giggled. “It’s so cliché.”

Sherlock paused for a second to actually pay attention to the song, now back to instrumental with heavy bass notes and a steady drum. “ I don’t see what’s so terrible about it,” she promised, nudging her stomach up a bit in what was clearly a blatant hint. Joan took it for what it was and gave her one last hard kiss on the mouth before starting down, kissing across her sternum, her breastbone, carefully avoiding her nipples before moving down to kiss her stomach patiently, with the air of someone who had all the time in the world.

Just then the words began again and Joan lifted her head to meet Sherlock’s eyes across the expanse of her body and loudly belted “I want you!” in the ridiculous, strained tones of the singer. Sherlock couldn’t help herself, she burst out laughing, dissolving into giggles as Joan continued to serenade her from by her hipbones.

“I want you so bad, babe,” she sang and Sherlock kept laughing, helpless, before her giggles turned into a shriek as Joan’s fingers tickled at her sides and her stomach hurt.

She’d never felt this way in bed before, like it was all just an extension of their friendship. Like they were just Sherlock and Joan, same as they’d always been, now with fewer clothes but still making each other shriek, still teasing each other for the pleasure of it, still treating the other one as human and normal and precious. Joan sang her way through the chorus into Sherlock’s stomach, blowing raspberries into her skin and making Sherlock clench up in pure joy, laughing and laughing like she couldn’t stop at the tickling and Joan’s eyes and mop of blonde hair pulled back as she sang along and Sherlock had never enjoyed their musical-education classes so goddamn much.

“I want you so bad it’s driving me mad,” Joan plucked out, punctuating her sentence with a nip at the band of Sherlock underwear and Sherlock was so caught between amusement and arousal that she almost felt split along the seams. It hurt, it ached, the laughter and the beating need fluttering both together in her stomach and it was the most pleasurable ache she’d ever felt. Was this sex, she thought wildly, staring down at Joan. Was sex supposed to be this good and this fun- all at once? Joan gripped her waist in a false grip, steady but easily escapable, and sang along with the record,

“She’s so-“ she beat her head to the bass, pausing to make a face at Sherlock that left her helpless in giggles again. “Heavy-Heavy-Heavy.”

It was almost too much, the tension of how good this was pressed against how bad she’d thought it might be. It couldn’t last, she figured, but Joan had a habit of catching her in those sorts of thoughts and coaxing her out of them willingly or otherwise. “Do women generally enjoy being called overweight in bed?” Sherlock said through a hanging breath, just to get her bearings, to contribute something to this mess of wonderful, and Joan left her stomach with a wet kiss before crawling back up to kiss her stupid for that comment alone.

“It’s not heavy like that,” Joan said once they’d peeled apart with an obscene wet noise between their mouths, petting back Sherlock’s curls from where they’d escaped into her eyes. “It’s heavy like deep, or serious or just fucking overwhelming. Like she’s everything to him. She’s his whole world.”

Sherlock stared back into Joan’s eyes, caught and overwhelmed herself and felt- “like this? Like how we are right now, my body feels so- full-” she stammered out, just to watch Joan’s pupils dilate further than she thought they could go.

“Yeah fuck, just like that,” Joan whispered, bending back down to take Sherlock’s mouth in her own, kiss her until they were both starving for it. “Exactly like that, so-so heavy, oh my god, Sherlock.”

By some silent negotiation, at the next transition back into the melody Joan abandoned their kissing to begin once again the descent. Sherlock struggled up on her elbows to watch her go, shivering at every kiss Joan laid against her collar, her ribcage, her inner thigh, before she looked up from between Sherlock’s legs and asked, “Can I take these off?”

She must have known, Sherlock thought, what she looked like down there and in fact Joan was meeting her eyes with the barest hint of a smirk but it was tempered with so much love and patient devotion, and with her pupils blown black, barely a sliver of blue even visible. Sherlock nodded and together they worked her underwear off, setting it to the side of the bed before Joan leaned in and set a small kiss at the top of the mound of wiry curls. 

It all sort of bled together at the edges then. Joan licked and kissed at the core of her and Sherlock let herself get lost in the bass melody, and then in just the feel of it. After a few minutes, or possibly hours, Joan reached up with one hand and coaxed Sherlock to put her hands in Joan’s hair, which was soft and curling a bit at the nape of Joan’s neck where she was sweating. She rubbed her thumbs at the fragile skin behind Joan’s ears and when Joan moaned, Sherlock felt it all the way through herself. 

Sherlock hooked one ankle behind the swell of Joan’s back and pushed up into the feeling, Joan positively encouraging her with her blunt nails firm against the back of Sherlock’s thighs and then suddenly Sherlock was cresting, hovering on the edge of something she could only express in quick, sharp moans that bit their way out of her mouth without conscious thought before finally, utterly splintering apart. She nearly cut through her tongue to keep from screaming out loud and Joan stayed down through it all, helping her twist and undulate through one and then a second, mouthing encouragingly at her folds when Sherlock’s thighs tightened around her head. 

Somewhere else, the record finished and spun off into silence, this side of the album done, but neither of them noticed. 

By the time Sherlock could breathe again, she found herself still lying in the small bed, the apartment silent save for the hum of the record player. Joan lay with her head against Sherlock’s hipbone, rubbing soothingly at the skin of Sherlock’s left knee. She looked up when she felt Sherlock stir against her and smiled. Sherlock couldn’t help noticing the wetness at Joan’s jaw and chin, the way her skin gleamed with it.

“Hi there,” Joan said and this time, utterly without her consent, Sherlock started crying. 

“Oh hey, baby,” Joan murmured, moving up the bed to kiss at Sherlock’s shoulder. “What’s wrong, what did I do?”

“Nothing, nothing really,” Sherlock said, rubbing at her eyes with the heel of her palms. Her voice was shot through, rough and used up, and she coughed a bit to clear her throat. The tears had already stopped, it had been a brief uncontrollable reaction, and Sherlock was trying not to feel ashamed of it. “I’m fine, I promise. It was just-”

“A lot?” Joan filled in when Sherlock trailed off and she nodded. 

“But good,” she promised, and Joan leaned in to kiss her shoulder again.

In the past waking nightmare of her previous sexual experience- and Joan had told her she didn’t have to call it that, that she had every right to say she was a virgin if she wanted to and strike the whole thing from the record, but she had done those things and had those things done to her and she wasn’t a virgin even if it hadn’t been her choice- Sherlock had certainly come a handful of times. He’d held those times over her head, leverage maybe or to assuage his own guilt, and they had never felt good. They were just things that happened to her, to the transport that was her body and that she couldn’t cut herself loose from no matter how many drugs she was taking.

A month into her friendship with Joan and she’d tried to masturbate for the first time in two years. It had gone poorly, and so had the next three attempts. But eventually she’d gotten herself to a place where she could get off and get herself to sleep if she needed to. Since April those times alone had gotten more intense, she’d admit, maybe even more enjoyable but nothing had really quite prepared her for what it would mean to let herself unravel in the presence and the hands of someone who loved her, who told her she loved her every single chance she got.

“I love you,” Joan said now and Sherlock wondered if she was glowing. She felt lit ablaze. 

“What can I do for you?” Sherlock asked, always much better with showing than telling. Joan shook her head.

“You don’t have to do anything baby, that can be just for you,” Joan said, which Sherlock had known she would, and this return to normalcy, to the realm of things Sherlock could anticipate calmed her enough to sit up and run her fingers through her own hair.

“I’d like to,” Sherlock said. Her body felt good, still shivering a bit with the second orgasm, and she wanted Joan to feel as good as she did. “I don’t think I can do all that yet but I can do something.”

Joan inhaled a bit shakily and smiled at her. “You could touch me, maybe,” she said, already reaching her hands into her underwear now that she’d been given permission. “It was really enough just to watch you, not the crying bit obviously but before-”

“Where should I touch you?” Sherlock asked, already reaching and Joan let her head fall back as she did something with her own fingers.

“Anywhere, honestly, just knowing it’s you is enough-” Joan said and Sherlock touched her neck and her stomach. She ran a hand along the bottom of Joan’s breast, felt the shape and the weight of it in her palm. She rubbed a finger over Joan’s nipple to watch her arch into it and moan and then, as Sherlock could see her getting close, she moved her hand to the front of Joan’s underwear, just on top of Joan’s and separated from her by only the thin pull of fabric and felt Joan clench and shiver and come with a quiet noise that she hid in the skin of Sherlock’s chest. 

Joan flopped down to stretch out alongside Sherlock and again the two of them lay there side by side, maybe only a handful of minutes from when they had done this earlier. Sherlock stared at the ceiling, at the play of light across the white beams and the dust motes swirling around them in intricate dances, remembering how to use her lungs. She felt Joan’s hand nudge hers and she opened up her palm to thread their fingers together.

“Good?” Joan asked into the space above them.

Sherlock breathed in and out. “May require further experimentation,” she said at last, a joke from their first kiss, and beside her Joan laughed. 

Eventually, Joan let go of her hand with a squeeze and got up to turn the record over. The first song on the B side was a soft number played out in synthesizer and hand-picked guitar before it changed. Joan looked at her from across the room, just in her underwear and an unreasonably fond expression on her face as she hummed along.

“Here comes the sun,” Joan sang, and Sherlock sat up fully to look at her, naked and swaying in the living room. “Here comes the sun and I say- it’s alright.”

You marvel, Sherlock thought, but didn’t say. You sunrise of a person that I have no right to and have been given anyway. And then, Joan’s voice in her mind, saying what she always said. _You deserve the world, Sherlock Holmes_.

It didn’t bear explaining, nor could it bear being looked at too closely. Instead, Sherlock found her panties on the bed and slipped them on so she could pad across the room and dance, just as shirtless and maybe just as happy, with Joan. 

**Author's Note:**

> The idea of Joan and Sherlock having sex to "I Want You," got lodged in my brain somewhere around the 5th chapter of "Smiles to Go." I couldn't find a way to make it fit with the timeline, so here it is on its own. 
> 
> Title comes from the so-called hidden track on the Abbey Road album and also cause Sherlock's a pillow princess.


End file.
